And he was hard on me. A 97 percent had him asking for the other three points, and when he was angry at me he could give me the silent treatment to end all silent treatments. But he was also, as they say, a hazobabas. He spoiled me.
Fady was asking something I didn’t hear. He was a good man, warm and reliable and generous, and Dimitra and Fady’s relationship always impressed me. They balanced one another; Dimitra always cool yet wildly spontaneous, and Fady more warm and open but with a measured accuracy to his behavior. Despite the years together, two decades, it was fresh, energetic, not bogged down by suburban lethargy or middle-age malaise. Leila became a part of their life, integrated in, as opposed to her becoming what their life revolved around. Make no mistake, though: Fady was besotted with his little girl, and now with Rami too, the three of them shooting baskets in the evenings in the park around the corner, or going to the Saturday market together to decide what to cook. They were fluid in that way, always open for something new.
Though I saw it as the ideal, I couldn’t bring myself to attempt it; I’m more comfortable as a guest outside the family unit than as a member of it. Or maybe I craved a more capacious definition of family. Fady said my name again.
Next to us, a table of drunk and beautiful young actors from the National Theater sang along with Dimitra’s version of “Trele Tsigane,” one of my favorites. Nefeli sat up in her chair, alert, and she touched Fady’s hand.
Then I turned to the street and there was Aris. He was walking past us, in a group. What was he doing in this neighborhood? We had come here together in the past, to this bar to hear Dimitra sing, and to the taverna next door, but lately he preferred posher neighborhoods, less fraught with political agitation. I downed my drink and reached for the little pitcher of raki.
I wanted to stand—partly to verify that it was truly him, and partly to mark this territory as mine after finally being able to imagine myself doing so—but I forced myself to sit through the rest of the song. When the musicians took a break, however, I left Fady and Nefeli and Dimitra talking with some others and excused myself to the restroom. My curiosity was bold and drunk and I found myself, stupidly, marching to the taverna. Sam, our usual waiter—a tall, cute, Eritrean guy—smiled and pointed to the table in the back, where I usually sat with my friends and where Aris now sat with his group.
That’s when Aris looked up. I tried to catch a glimpse of Eva, how could I not, looking as I’d remembered her from movies. Long wavy hair, blonde highlights, large hoop earrings, red lipstick. Then I caught the eye of one of her friends—blue blouse, hair piled atop her head, dramatic dark eyebrows arched, alert. A parade of women marched through my mind, women who’d blatantly flirt with Aris at this or that event, me by his side. Had Eva been one of them?
Then a man raised his hand, a solid, unmoving wave. The Captain. All this made it all the more disorienting, and Aris probably saw that in my face. Looking terrified, Aris gestured for me to wait as I turned and walked back out to the street, where he soon caught up with me. I led us into the small alley behind the taverna. Aris took both my hands in his, in what first seemed a gesture of affection but I quickly realized was one of restraint.
If I thought I had detected some anguish at his first glance, I was wrong; the fear on his face that I’d make a scene shot rage and shame through me. But when have I been the type of woman to make a scene? My mother had made scenes, spontaneous outbursts in department stores, inexplicable road rage, irrational anger about a mistake on a phone bill or a bank statement, drunken displays at parties or just from the front porch.
He let go of my hands. I had once loved the way he’d looked at me, but over the past few years his gaze had begun to feel slightly more judgmental than appreciative: his awareness of what I wore, how smoothly I styled my hair, was my dress right, became my awareness too. It’s not that he was critical, but I was certainly scrutinized. Or maybe it was my perception of his gaze that changed. Our breakup thrust me into an Athens I now navigated in my jeans and boots and sweaters, free of any sort of false trappings, makeup, any sort of disingenuous performance. The breakup, the online photos: they all felt abstract. But seeing them—him and Eva—out together, another night with friends: that was when it hit.
The din from the taverna seemed louder, more boisterous. People milled around the street now, smoking, some in front of the bar where Dimitra was singing. I could hear her going into another of my favorites. Down the middle of the street a group of teenagers walked by, dressed in torn black clothing, followed by a group of German tourists, mostly women in their sixties in colorful T-shirts, taking the teens’ photo from behind.
I moved to go past him, but he grabbed my arm. I didn’t want to talk and I certainly didn’t want to argue. What did I want, then? A fresh wave of shame washed over me, the thought of him wandering this neighborhood hand in hand with his fiancée. I wanted to see it, to go back into the taverna and get a good look at them together. I wanted the sting of it. Hell, I wanted to watch her in their house, taking a shower, fucking Aris in his bed, having an orgasm on the kitchen counter, her expensive heels falling to the floor as she curled her toes. I wanted to watch him touch her body. I wanted to see. What she had, what she was. What I wasn’t.
I was sick; I was losing the plot, but for a moment that’s what I wanted.
“Mira,” he said.
“You hate this neighborhood,” I said.
Eventually we’d cross paths. I was still close with his father; we both visited the island regularly. Yet if Aris was thinking this, he didn’t have the cruelty to say it.
“I didn’t—” he began, but didn’t finish. “This isn’t easy for me,” he said.
It is impossible to piece together where something went wrong when all we have are memories, and memories of memories. You could take them all and line them up, each moment, but it would never add up to a life. What makes a life is the white space, the glue that holds everything together. It is impossible to know, impossible to understand. I had thought everything lay in the unsaid.
I couldn’t look at him. “What exactly do you want me to say? You want my blessing, for fuck’s sake?”
“You know how much you mean to me,” he said. “Always.”
“But you love her,” I said. For years I had simply assumed, projected, that because I felt that invisible line linking us, no matter what, that he did too. I was dizzy. Affection and love are not the same thing.
“It’s not only about love,” he said. “You’re simplifying.”
“I don’t know. I think it is,” I said.
I felt like I had woken up from a deep sleep unsettled, confused, trying to make sense of what was real and what was not.
“We can still have something.”
I looked into his eyes a moment, trying to read what he was saying, what he was offering or asking for. Was this guilt or truth or something in between? I had become an extension of Aris’s self, and sometimes I think he didn’t realize that I was a separate entity, not just something that lived both inside him and very far away.
Either way, it didn’t matter. “Are we done here?” I asked, painfully aware that I had come to the taverna after him, met his gaze, led him into the alley. “I have to get back.”